Precious Things
by Hahren Jezek
Summary: "Nathaniel shakes his head as he meets her eyes, the corners of his mouth tugging down into a frown that feels second nature to him. Each breath that leaves her, he breathes in. Every breath that she takes is heavy with him. 'I loved you,' he repeats. His grip loosens." - Nathaniel Howe and F!Cousland come to blows over transgressions not forgotten. Rated M for graphic smut.


**A/N - This One-Shot is in response to the Character Spotlight Challenge from the Dragon Age Fanfic Writer's group on Facebook. I've never tackled Awakening characters before, but I have always wanted to because it's pretty much my favorite DLC. For this One-shot, Nathaniel's backstory is a bit AU, but it will be at least partially explained. This fic is rated M for graphic smut. I got carried away. Enjoy, and as always reviews are always appreciated.**

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She sits as he speaks to her to infuriate him.

"We found nothing in the marshes. I've told you, the spawn have moved east—" He reflexively swallows his words when her finger rises to hush him. Nathaniel clench his fists. For months, he bends and scrapes to this woman for crimes imagined and uncommitted. She pokes and prods. She watches and she smirks. The sight of her begins to turn his stomach, and there is nothing that he might do that will not leave her victorious in her quest for blood.

"The eastern reaches of Ferelden are not our concern. I want the marshes kept free and clear of all spawn and ghouls, is that understood?" Her brows arch, one higher than the other, as though he doesn't know the meaning of her looks and tones. She pretends that they weren't betrothed during those dark times. She pretends that he didn't give up everything to see her freed. Nathaniel's blood boils, and the words pour forward before he can stop them.

"To what end? Are there villagers in the marshes that need defending? Is it not our duty to—"

"And I suppose a Howe knows a great many things about duty?" She snaps.

Her chair is sent tumbling backwards as she hauls herself to her feet. He hates himself for it, but Nathaniel feels his eyes twitch nervously as her fist slams against the table between them. She leans closer, and lips that he used to cherish curl back into a mocking sneer. Nathaniel steps forward to meet her, straightening to look down the length of his nose. Time has changed her. Skin is left tanned, worn, and leathery, with white dashes of scars in some places, and ugly knotted ridges lining others. The laughter and life that lurks in her eyes winters long past is extinguished. In its wake, it leaves a bitter gleam that seeks to swallow everything in its path.

"I am _Not_ my father, Woman!" He hears someone roaring.

He thinks it can't be him, but her eyes light with a ruthless glow that tells him it is.

"Do you not share his name and blood? Are you not cut of the same treacherous cloth?!"

He ducks to the side as the war-hardened woman lunges forward and aims a fist underneath his chin. The Blight sees her changed in more ways than flesh. Nathaniel is quick and light on his feet and manages to dodge the blows aimed at his face, but fires light up in his thighs from where her boots connect. Taking a chance, he catches her arm the next time she sets it loose in his direction. He grips tight, but it's not enough.

"I saw you safe! I saw your father from death's door, and I killed my father's own men for you!" He says, heat flaring up inside of his face as he twists and flips her over his hip and onto the stone floors. "Everything I did, for you!"

She skids, and the light mesh of chain links she has on over her leathers scratches nastily against the ground. Her head rises and she stares. There is no love in her eyes, she hides no aching tenderness for the dark-haired man before her. She sees not the man that gifts her with soft kisses and gentle touches in winters past, but instead the blood-soaked figure holding a knife to her father's throat after Duncan forces her into the passageways. She knows it was asked of him. She knows her father would rather die to a loyal man's compassion than to a traitor's blade- but it does not hurt less.

"You saw them murdered! You cut their throats yourself, as though they were common thieves," she snarls, lips curling back to show teeth a touch too large to suit her features, and a small molar knocked loose by a Genlock years ago. Rounding on him, she assaults him once more, and this time lands a blow to his gut that has him bending at the waist.

"Is that what you think?!" He sputters, winded from the blow.

His arms coil tightly around her, and Nathaniel squeezes her until he feels a strained breath forced from her lungs. Her snarls turn to disdainful sneers, and she thrashes. His muscles clench down tighter, and he does not move until she looks at him.

"The life you lost was my own, too. I loved you- I loved you since childhood; never was I happier than when your father gave me your hand, and with all of the precious things that we shared," he whispers fiercely. Her eyes are narrow and show no more than slits of color, but he sees himself inside of them. He sees the man that he could have been, with loving wife at his side, and he sees what the fates have really set in motion for them. He sees what they could have had, standing there with his arms wrapping snuggly around her to save himself broken bones and bruises that will never pay his debt.

"I loved you, I wanted our life together so badly," he hisses.

His head tips forward until their foreheads are touching. She lets out a strangled sounding shout in response, but the desperate way that he clings to her sees her going nowhere. Her eyes crack open, and she stares. Nathaniel shakes his head as he meets her eyes, the corners of his mouth tugging down into a frown that feels second nature to him. Each breath that leaves her, he breathes in. Every breath that she takes is heavy with him.

"I loved you," he repeats. His grip loosens.

She gives a strong jerk in his grasp, freeing herself from his arms and slamming her hands into his chest. She pushes him down onto the ground, only to find herself being pulled down right along with him. She knows that even now he will not strike her, and it wounds her. To see him patiently waiting stings. To think that he might be such the person that he could forgive the nightmarish hell she puts him through. To think that he, a Howe, the son of the man that slaughtered her family, might be of such strength that he could still love someone after so much.

She thrashes against him, trying to wound him and to find it in herself to forgive him all at once.

In the end, her lips crush against his.

Nathaniel winces as his head is shoved back against the floor. The feeling of her mouth moving with his makes him pine for a life he knows they will never have. That some oceans are too deep to cross does not elude him. He feels her hands as she grips and tugs at his shirt and trousers, linking her callused fingers through thin ties and jerking them until the tender V of his belly is barren to her touch. When his lips part, she slips her tongue in to make use of empty spaces.

"Have you gone ma—" he chokes as her hand grips his length urgently.

"Hush," she hisses against his lips. Her teeth nip sharply at the corner of his mouth.

He knows that she will leave bruises, but as her fingers curl around the base of his newly freed member and tempt him toward her, Nathaniel finds it much harder to care of the consequences. Underneath her, he arches up to her touches and reaches up to grip her by the shoulder and pull her down to meet him. His lips seek her neck ravenously. Feeling her pulse thunder against the curve of his mouth, a weighted, bitter laugh wrests itself free from him.

Memories of tender touches plague them, and as if to fight it, they harden themselves to each other.

"Stop moving so much!"

"Hush, Woman!" he spits back at her. He tugs at her arms, and her balance falters, making her drop to her hands and knees on top of him, her hips lowered and hovering above the midway point of his thighs. He cranes his neck to watch her as she struggles to right herself, first just for her pride, and then to tear at the straps and buckles that keep her light armor in place.

Piece by piece she sheds them until her naked form crushes back against his, desperately clinging for purchase that she has never been able to find. Grey eyes shift to the scars that matt her skin. He sees inside of them not a war won and annihilation conquered, but dreams withered on the vine that spawned them. He sees where both men and monster have taken pieces of her, and it fills him with an anger he cannot explain. He has no right to her, he knows this, but it pains him to see what time has done to her when he still remembers easy smiles and ready laughter. He thinks he might never hear her laugh in such free manners again. His hands reach out to grip the backs of her thighs, and he guides her forward to his rigid organ. He feels the telltale heat radiating out from between her legs.

A thick droplet squeezes free of the slit at the crown of his member.

Nathaniel winces as he hands press at his chest once more and force him to lie back and to hand over the control that she so desperately needs from him. He sees her arch and coo before he feels it, but all at once there is a slick, burning, silky heat that envelops his cock from root to tip. His length twitches and pulses. Inside of her, he can feel her walls clenching down and pulling at his flesh. With barely enough time to draw another breath, Nathaniel finds it forced from his lungs as she rocks her hips against him, circling her core in ways that fuel a bitter jealousy inside of him, because it must mean that there have been others to warm her bed all of these long nights, so far from broken promises.

"Nnrgh!" He groans the next she leans back. Her belly curves so invitingly as she tips her head back, hair falling wildly in ways that he barely remembers from their youth. His hand reaches up to cup and grope a breast that heaves and bounces all too invitingly to ignore. Her legs begin to quiver. Nights spent wishing to make her speak to him surge back, and all of her scorn reminds him of blistering regret. He wrinkles his nose. He cannot help himself—he meets her as urgently as she fills herself.

Nathaniel hoists his shoulders off of the ground and tangles his free hand inside of her hair, tugging and pulling to force her to strain under him so that she might know how she hurts him, and how it pains him to try and forgive her again and again each time.

His hardened, veined cock slips free of her with a wet sounding pop as he wrests her off of his lap and tosses her unceremoniously onto the dusty rug behind her. He sees her wince and scramble to try and rise. Perhaps she feels it, the flicker of doubt that pulls at his stomach even now, with his member soaked with her essence. It is too late for them. He knows it and so does she.

"Nathaniel, please—" she whimpers.

Her crooked nose and fine scar lines wrinkle in ways he hasn't seen before, and there is a helpless tone to her voice that he wishes he didn't hear. It is easier to be angry with her when she is stubborn and unyielding. It is easier to believe he truly did right when he sees only his father in her eyes, and none of what they had promised each other.

"I need—" she doesn't finish, but she doesn't have to.

Nathaniel falls over her like a heavy shadow, his hands touching and caressing each part of her in turn. He traces the lines of her neck, dexterous finger pinch at her nipples and press against the underside of her breasts—just to see them heft higher and to hear her squeal. He throws her legs out of his way and fits himself between her thighs. Turgid with blood and aching for release, his member paints streaks of sticky pre against the inside of her legs and over her sex. There is nothing he can do to make her forget the horrors they have lived through permanently, but right now, with one hand at her breasts, another at her throat, and his cock spreading her wide, he will make sure she thinks of nothing else.

They buck against each other frantically, covered in a thick sheen of sweat.

He's not sure how long he spends reaching inside of her. He's not sure how many times the thickest part of his length grinds against the most tender places inside of her. He's not sure how many times she gasps for breath and sends delicate flecks of spittle down onto her chin and soft breasts. He's not sure how many times her nails dig bloody ravines into the flesh of his back.

When it happens, he is sure of that much.

It starts with a burning raggedness deep in his throat. His eyes glaze with pleasure at the wet sound of slick flesh slapping against flesh, and at the feeling of her inner walls clenching and pulsing rhythmically around his cock each time it slams inside of her. It grows as she whispers his name, and the warmth oozes down his throat and into his stomach, where it churns with each thrust and grows hotter and tighter inside of him.

"N-natha-ahh-ahnn!" She squeals and thrashes against the rug. Her hands stretch out and twist to grip handfuls of the old fabric, desperate for anything to steady her during his ravenous fucking.

The hand at her throat treks lower, a few inches with each thrust, until it hovers above the swollen flesh of her sex. He sees her eyes flicker brightly, and when his fingers find the nub of flesh hidden away, it isn't long before he sets her to quivering and panting again. She pleads, and he thrusts harder still, fighting against his climax. When it ends, he knows that nothing will change.

"Hh-h-aahrhnngh!" She cries out and stiffens, her hips raising as her depths suck hungrily at his cock, begging for his seed as her own essence struggles to spray out around his cock, only succeeding in soaking the floor beneath them. She shivers and goes slack beneath him.

Groaning loudly at the sight of her, drained and spent and with nothing left in her to fight him, Nathaniel sighs and welcomes his release. He stares down at her as the head of his cock swells with promise, straining against her insides. All at once, the heat leaves his body and spills out inside of her, thick splatters of his seed pressing urgently against the entrance to her womb—another dream to lose to the night. For long moments, he stays inside of her, with his cock still pulsing minutes later. The lanterns in the room burn low, but even in the dim light, he can still see her face. Her eyes search his for answers, for meaning, and she does not find any.

He pulls himself free of her as he tells himself he would any other woman, and he wipes his prick off against her thighs before he tucks himself away.

A last look between the two steals what warmth their coupling has granted them.

He knows they will never escape it, and that all precious things are lost.


End file.
